Thursday, 12 December 2013

MAN
GIVES BIRTH TO CHILD. Tabloid Stories, c. 1600

You
thought tabloids were a modern invention? Read on.

The
Fugger Newsletter of 26 May 1601 offers this racy item:

After
seven years of marriage, Daniel Burghammer confessed to his wife that he was half man and half woman. Apparently this
detail had escaped her notice-- until
he gave birth to a girl. OMG! How did this happen? He slept only once with a Spaniard and
became pregnant therefrom. A notary examined him and confirmed that he
hadthe natural organs of a man for
passing water and thathe was
able
tosuckle the child with his right
breast but not on the left side, where he is a man. The child was
baptized Elizabeth.
The christening was attended by more than five hundred people, including soldiers
from Burghammer’s regiment, as well as drummers, pipers and three trumpeters.
Sad to say, the couple divorced soon afterwards.

Another
item of interest to 16th century tabloid readers: A child was born covered
with cat’s hair!It
began to talk eight days after birth and to walk after a month. It is said that
this is the Child of Perdition, the Antichrist. A great deal more was said
about the child, but our informant omitted itbecause it did not sound very credible(Newsletter, 14 April 1592).

For
something more credible, let’s consider The Miracle of Weimar(Newsletter, 20 January 1589). A
citizen of that town had a collection of antlers. In 1588 he was given a stag’s
antlers with six points and stored it in the attic. A year later, he finally
got around to mounting it. When he drilled a hole into the bone, it began to
bleed, and neither water nor soda could remove the stains. God knows what this
portends!

I
say it portended the birth of the NRA.

Or
else it foreshadowed the birth of The National Enquirer.

And
now let’s hear it for The Wild Irish(Newsletter, 15 Sept. 1586). The Earl of Leicester had a troop of
1500 Irish. They were almost all naked. Some of them walked on stilts through
castle moats and climbed walls. Handy for conquering fortresses, no?

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About Me

I was born in Vienna and obtained a doctorate from the University of Toronto. I am the author of more than a dozen non-fiction books (social history, biography, translation), three novels (Playing Naomi, 2009, Head Games,2013, and The Effects of Isolation on the Brain, forthcoming) as well as a novella, Unspeakable (download from smashwords). I divide my time between Toronto and Los Angeles, and have lived in villages in Argentina, Romania, and Bulgaria. Want to know more about me? Follow me on Twitter @historycracks. Visit my website:
http://www.erikarummel.com/